After 3 weeks of preparation and 3 friendly games we can draw up already a little balance.

Against Pulle, at our national holiday, the fact the people talked most about was the weather. It rained cats and dogs and because of this, everybody became soaking wet. Nevertheless there were a lot of fans. Fantastic! Pulle defended with everything they had and our boys showed a lot of willingness tot score a lot of goals and this scoring happened.

At Wednesday against Pulderbos, the opponent was a bit better. The difference in the result was because of the poor finishing. This has a lot to do with the interval training in the afternoon at 13.30 at the track in Lier. Also the local goalkeeper was very good. At the end of the game we were even with 9 players, because Buyens and Tshiala got injured and had to leave the field.

Against our fellow townsmen Lyra, it became for the first time a real game. We fell behind early in the game after a misunderstanding in our defence. But we stayed calm and after 15 minutes, the score was already 1-2 after goals of Bojovic and Buyens. Lyra had to restrict itself tot the counterattack and we had enough chances to decide the game. After an hour, Buyens received the reward for his pressing and he gave Cavens the ball for the 1-3. Five minutes before the end of the game, Lyra took advantage of a misjudgement of keeper Van der Jeugt.

With still 2,5 weeks before the start of the competition, we are content about the effort and the physical condition. Now we can concentrate more on the football technical and tactical trainings. Especially when we loose the ball, we have to become harder in the duels. No gentleman football, but fighting for every square metre is the message. Also the set up has to be better, we still loose to many balls on the own half. Every player must make not only make oneself better, but also his teammates. Everybody has to give every game his best. When the intensity of the practicing will decrease, the sharpness in the attack will return and the chances will be (hopefully) finished better.

Now we have 4 games in 8 days. Hoogstraten, Dender, Turnhout and especially Getafe are our general repetition for the new born Exqi-league. Hopefully, we can recover some injured players for these games. Then everybody can show that he’s ready to make of this season a beautiful one.

One for all and all for one.

Until two weeks, Eric Van Meir